Semiotic conflicts related to confidence interval in high school and engineering students

• Main Authors: Antonio Francisco Roldán-López, Carmen Batanero, Rocío Alvarez-Arroyo
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros 2020-04-01
• Series: Educação Matemática Debate
• Subjects: confidence interval; understanding; engineering and high school students
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.24116/emd.e202010

The relevance that the confidence interval receives today is reflected in the inclusion of the subject in the Bachelor of Social Sciences and in university studies, including engineering. The purpose of the work was to compare the understanding of the essential properties of the interval in these two types of students. To achieve this goal, the responses of 58 high school and 37 engineering students to a questionnaire consisting of six multiple-choice items are analysed. The results show Bayesian interpretations of the interval, lack of understanding of the way in which its amplitude is related to the sample size or population variance, and ignorance of the purpose of the estimation by intervals, the results being somewhat better in the engineering students.